


you're on my heart (just like a tattoo)

by wordsfallapart



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (but not really), (it's hard to find but it's there!), (it's just inspired by hbo!spn), (like on the wrist and forehead), 10.03: Soul Survivor, 15.19: Inherit the Earth, 15.20: Carry On, 2.21: All Hell Breaks Loose, 3.11: Mystery Spot, 3.16: No Rest for the Wicked, 7.23: Survival of the Fittest, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, If Supernatural (TV) Were on HBO, Memories, Permanent Character Death, Platonic Kissing, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, Platonic Soulmates, Platonic Touching, Post-Hell Dean Winchester, Post-Lucifer's Cage Sam Winchester, Pre-Stanford, Queerplatonic Relationships, Tattoos, Temporary Character Death, Weechesters, gencest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29078490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsfallapart/pseuds/wordsfallapart
Summary: dean gets a tattoo after every kill he makes. not much changes.or: the exact storyline of supernatural, condensed, in the context of dean's ink.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	you're on my heart (just like a tattoo)

**Author's Note:**

> this escaped from me a little, but i hope you guys like it! it's inspired by the idea of hbo!spn, but follows canon. set at various points, from pre-stanford to post-finale. i'll tag the episode in which each little part is set. i made up a few memories and stuff for the *angst*. 
> 
> (rated t for canon-typical violence and gore)
> 
> i always write sam and dean in a really intense, emotionally intimate way. they are completely platonic, but i write them in a capital 'R' Romantic way. that is to say, not sexually involved, but since they are canonically soulmates and lack a lot of physical boundaries, i like to amp it up a little with the platonic touches and codependency. 
> 
> random side note, dean smokes a cigarette in this. i imagine that he wouldn't do this ever in actual canon because smoking ruins your lungs, but i'm going to envision that he'll occasionally smoke a cigarette to clear his head. very, very occasionally. 
> 
> also: feel free to point out any typos. i have probably made many errors. i am very tired.
> 
> (title taken from "tattoo" by jordin sparks)

Dean Winchester gets his first tattoo three days after his eighteenth birthday. He’s just salted and burned the bones of a man who killed himself after murdering his wife and children to keep them with him.  


Sam is the first to see it when Dean stumbles into their bedroom and asks Sam to look at the cut on his back before stripping off his shirts. The gash is three inches long and in the shadowed hollow beneath the bruised blade of Dean’s shoulder. It doesn’t need stitches. As Dean flops over after Sam cleans and bandages it, the low light of the lamp catches on the plastic wrap on Dean’s left shoulder. Sam tips his head closer to examine it, and Dean lifts up a little to reach up and peel the plastic off, dropping his head back down so his cheek rests on the pillow while he blinks up at Sam. His green eyes are luminous and expectant in the soft lamplight.  


The tattoo is a simple line, thin and about an inch long, sitting on the center of Dean’s arm, just on the curve of his shoulder. The skin beneath it ripples like water when Dean shifts a little further into the light. Sam edges his thumb right up to it, but doesn’t touch the ink or the reddened skin around it.  


“A tally mark?” Sam asks.  


Dean nods and smiles.  


*  


Over the next four years, Sam watches the line of tally marks grow widdershins around Dean’s arm, curling over his bicep and the pale insides, covering the freckles that come and go depending on whether they’re in Washington or Oklahoma. Sometimes Dean can’t get the tally marks immediately after his kills, so Sam will sometimes see three, four, five appear at the same time. The biggest jump he’s seen is ten.  


On the days that it’s too hot out to even think, Dean lounges around shirtless, arms splayed. Sam passes the time tracing his eyes over the marks, counting them over and over instead of watching the old westerns Dean plays on the boxy televisions. It’s hard to see the ones on the inside of Dean’s arm, but Sam manages. Eventually, he memorizes the exact way the light plays on them, the variations in their darkness that depend on how old they are and the quality of the ink.  


Whenever there’s seriously nothing for them to do, Dean will point out each tally mark and talk animatedly about each of the monsters they represent. Sam always says, “Yes, I was _there_ , De.” By that he means, _I’m always watching you, paying attention to you, don’t you know that_?  


But he always lets Dean tell him about his tattoos, anyway.  


*  


When Sam leaves for Stanford, the marks are nearing Dean’s elbow.  


*  


Girls like Dean’s tattoos. They make him look edgier, more dangerous. They’re intrigued by the beaten leather jacket that looks older than he is. They see the way Dean leans against the wall of a bar, the end of his cigarette flaring red as he inhales, the smoke curling from his smirking lips as he exhales. They see the way his eyes follow them, quickly assessing. He smiles at them, and there’s something old and sad in his expression. When Dean sleeps with those girls, and they shove that jacket and his flannel from his shoulders, they see the tally marks cross hatching his arm, thin and black and peeking from beneath his t-shirt.  


They wonder what they’re for, and ask as they trail their lips over them. Dean just gives them a wry smile and tugs his arm away. Doesn’t respond. Always mysterious.  


Girls are a little afraid of Dean’s tattoos.  


*  


Sam leaves Jess at their apartment and goes back on the road with his brother. The first thing he notices when Dean rolls up his sleeves as he drives is that the tattoos are down to the middle of his forearm.  


“How many is that?” Sam asks.  


Dean glances at his arm, shrugs. “Haven’t actually counted in a while.”  


*  


When Sam wakes up on a mattress far away from Cold Oak, all he remembers is walking towards his brother—Dean’s _here_ , safe, safe, safe, have to get to Dean, _have to get to Dean_ —the sharp pain in his back, the numbness, and Dean, Dean, catching him, frantically shouting. He remembers the warmth of his brother’s arms and the panic in his eyes. The last thing he remembers seeing as his eyes flutter closed is his brother’s pale wrist. He remembers thinking, _Sorry I won’t be able to see you fill your whole arm up with tattoos, Dean_.  


He remembers his sight fading to black.  


*  


The eighth time Sam loses Dean in Broward County, he starts keeping track by tally in a notebook. He hits one-hundred and three before Tuesday ends and it’s finally, _finally_ Wednesday. He stares in awe at his very-much-alive brother in a t-shirt, brushing his teeth, tattoos spiraling down his arm. Getting up slowly, afraid to break the spell, he walks directly into Dean’s arms, hugging him tight. As he pulls away, he trails his hands down from Dean’s shoulders to grasp his wrists, centering himself. “You’re okay?” he asks.  


“Yeah, I’m fine, Sammy,” Dean replies, bewildered, but twists his hands slightly to grip Sam’s wrists back, his ring a slice of coolness against the inside of Sam’s wrist.  


Then, downstairs, Dean is shot. Dead, permanently. He begs for Dean to come back, begs the Trickster, God, and whoever else is listening to give him his Dean. If there _is_ anyone listening, they don’t seem to care.  


Sam feels everything in him shut down.  


His vision turns red.  


*  


When Dean is torn apart by the hellhounds, the tally marks circle his wrist, the last three right in the center of the skin on the inside of it. Sam clutches his brother’s body to himself and sobs his heart out. When he rests Dean back onto the floor after several long minutes (the longest of his life), he takes Dean’s left hand in his own, and they stick together, both soaked in blood. The tattoos are intact, but the red smears over the black. He touches his lips to the three tally marks on Dean’s wrist, but he feels no pulse. He spends the next hour counting Dean’s marks over and over, smudging his red fingerprints onto his older brother’s cooling skin. Then, gently, he lifts Dean’s head and tugs the amulet off. He drapes it over his own neck, and the heavy brass thumps his chest.  


He carries his brother’s body to the Impala bridal style instead of in a fireman’s carry because he doesn’t want Dean’s guts spilling out.  


He calls Bobby and gives him the news. Tells him, “Can you get some wood ready?”  


“Yeah,” Bobby says, voice choked and teary, “I’ll build—”  


“Not for a pyre. For a coffin.”  


“Sam—”  


“ _Do it_ , Bobby,” Sam emphasizes, and before he hangs up, adds “and don’t build it. I’ll do it myself.”  


He drives through the night and doesn’t stop until he reaches Singer Auto Salvage.  


*  


He sets his brother’s body on an old mattress. Bobby tries to talk to him, but he says nothing. He doesn’t mean to ignore Bobby, not really. He just _can’t_ talk, but he remembers. Remembers when Dean told him about how he stopped talking after Mom died, and how he started again a few months later because he realized that Sam should have a bedtime story like he always had. “You were the reason I started talking again,” Dean had affectionately said.  


Now, there’s no reason for Sam to talk again.  


He cuts the rest of Dean’s clothes off when Bobby lets him be. Pushes his brother’s intestines back into his abdominal cavity, and begins to sew the skin back together. “Don’t want you to have your guts falling out when I get you back, Dean,” he says to his brother’s body. His stitches are even, neat, and he counts.  


_Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one_ …  


His dry eyes start to itch.  


_Two hundred and fifty-six, two hundred and fifty-seven_ …  


His fingers ache to the bone when he finishes, but Dean’s chest, stomach, and legs are all fixed. He washes him carefully starting at his head, his freckled nose and cheeks and chin, makes sure to clean behind his ears. When he reaches Dean’s left arm, he finds a near perfect handprint he made in Dean’s blood when he tried to gather his brother into his arms to carry.  


He leaves the handprint. “Another tattoo for your collection,” he says. Sam dresses him in one of his own soft black t-shirts that Dean always stole, a clean pair of boxers, and Dean’s best jeans and favorite green shirt. “It’ll bring out the green in your eyes,” Sam had rambled when Dean had removed the newspaper wrapping, nervous because it was the first birthday of Dean’s they were together for since Jess’s death.  


Dean had rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks, Mom,” he teased, but there was warmth in his eyes as he stripped off his overshirt and replaced it with Sam’s gift, rolling the sleeves up his forearms, and Sam noticed that the shirt contrasted well with Dean’s ink, too, actually.  


“Happy Birthday, De,” Sam said, relieved that he still knew how to make Dean happy, and—  


Sam jolts himself from his staring at Dean’s open eyes. He reaches out with trembling fingers and shuts them, shivering. They’re so empty and flat, not the lively verdant green that always held a spark of mischief.  


He leaves the room and finds Bobby, who leads him to a pile of lumber. It smells fresh and clean. Pine.  


Bobby hesitates. “Sam, we should really—”  


“I said _no_ , Bobby!” he yells, whirling around. And then, quietly, “He’s gonna need it back when I save him.” Bobby must see something broken and desperate in his eyes, because he sighs in acquiescence.  


“Then let me help you, Sam,” he says, softly.  


“I have to do it on my own,” Sam replies, and gets to work measuring and sawing and nailing. Finally, he stands back from his work and wipes the sweat dripping from his forehead. It’s a little rough, but it’ll hold. He carries Dean out to the box and lays him gently into it. He kisses his brother’s cool, dry forehead before Bobby helps him strap the box in one of his trucks, and they drive out to Pontiac, Illinois, at Sam’s insistence.  


When Bobby asks why, Sam just says, “He likes Pontiac.”  


*  


But he remembers.  


Remembers how, on Dean’s eighteenth birthday, they were staying in a little rental house there. Remembers when Dad had left for a few hours on foot and came roaring back in an old truck. Sam and Dean had rushed outside, and Dad had given Dean one of his rare smiles and tossed Dean a set of keys, then pointed at the Impala. “You take care of her, now, or I’ll kick your ass.”  


Dean had let out a loud whoop of joy and tackled their father in a hug, babbling “Thank you,” over and over. John seemed stunned, but he carefully hugged Dean back for a few seconds, then pulled away with a little laugh and said, “And you’re helping me fix up the truck.”  


Dean grinned. “Yes, sir,” he replied, and rushed back into the house to grab his jacket while Sam stood, shocked. He was happy for his brother but couldn’t help but feel a little sad. This meant that Dean would be leaving him behind more often and while Sam valued his independence, he enjoyed spending time with Dean more than anything.  


“C’mon, Sammy!” Dean’s joyful voice broke in, and Sam’s head snapped up to see the grin on Dean’s face. “Stop broodin’ and grab your jacket! I’m gonna teach you how to drive!”  


Sam grinned back and rushed to grab his jacket, came back, and threw himself into the passenger seat of the car.  


“Be careful!” their dad called. “And be back in two hours!”  


They drove out to a low-traffic road and Sam practiced driving under Dean’s patient tutelage, the fields passing by as they jolted along.  


*  


Sam slowly digs Dean’s grave by himself, but he lets Bobby help him lower the box into the hole. Sam makes sure that the lid has a tight fit, but doesn’t nail it shut. They fill the hole together, and Sam stakes the cross into the ground. He stands over his brother’s grave covered in blood, sweat, and tears, bone-tired and nauseous. He has not slept in sixty-six hours. Everything in him wants to join Dean.  


He forces himself to turn away from the grave. He climbs into the truck while Bobby says his goodbyes. Sam sees Bobby raise a flask and pour whiskey over the dirt.  


When they drive away, Sam doesn’t look back, clutching his fingers around the amulet so hard that the cord digs into his neck and he bruises his palm on the horns.  


He has work to do.  


*  
For the next four months, when he tries to fall asleep, he sees Dean’s tattoos in his mind’s eye. He focuses hard, tries not to think about his brother’s skin cleaved apart, his brother’s blood stuck underneath his fingernails. His brother, in Hell, screaming for Sam to come save him.  


Instead of counting sheep, he counts the tally marks.  


*  


When Dean comes back from Hell, his tattoos are gone. He doesn’t start getting them again, and for a long time, Sam wonders why. He wonders as he watches Dean thrash in his sleep, as he begs for mercy in a whisper, eyes fluttering. He wonders as he watches the circles beneath his brother’s eyes grow darker until they’re like bruises, until it looks like he’s gotten into a fight in his sleep.  


He wonders when he watches every muscle in Dean’s body lock up when he hears the name “Alastair,” or when he flinches at the grating sound of metal over metal.  


He even wonders when he’s soulless, except that it is a cold sort of wonder, a vague curiosity. When the wall holding back Lucifer in his mind shatters, he’ll sometimes see the tattoos when he looks at Dean’s left arm. They are intensely dark on his brother’s skin, and that black soothes the burning in his eyes from seeing the light of the Morningstar moments before.  


He blinks, and the tattoos are gone again.  


*  


On one hunt, Sam and Dean save thirteen people from a vamp nest. At the motel, right as Sam is falling asleep, eyes blurry and mind elsewhere, he sees Dean pull out a small black notebook from his jacket and pick up a pen from the nightstand, labelled in blue with the name of the motel. Dean writes in the notebook, and Sam drifts off.  


*  


Later, right after Dean dies taking down Dick Roman, Sam finds that notebook in Dean’s duffle. He had been trying to find a shirt of Dean’s to comfort himself with its smell. He flips open the notebook, and finds page after page of tally marks. His tears drip onto the pages, blurring the cheap ink.  


Grabbing Dean’s Led Zeppelin t-shirt, he climbs into the backseat of the Impala and places it on top of one of his balled-up jackets, lays his head down, and presses his nose into the fabric.  


He wonders.  


*  


Three days after demon Dean nearly kills him, Sam finds the singed edges of the cover of the notebook in the trash.  


Two months later, when Sam wakes Dean up from a screaming nightmare, he sees a new small notebook on Dean’s bedside table in his bedroom. The cover is a dark green. He climbs into the bed and strokes his fingers through Dean’s sweaty hair until his big brother falls back asleep with his fingers curled tight into the hem of Sam’s shirt.  


When Dean weeps softly in his sleep, whispering “Sorry,” over and over, Sam wipes his tears away with the edge of his thumb and holds Dean tighter against his chest.  


*  


Two days after Sam and Dean spare Chuck, Sam sees a new tattoo on the center of the inside of Dean’s wrist. Only one, and over the next couple of years, it stays that way, even though they continue hunting.  


Sam doesn’t ask about it, but he almost does, one day. Sam is in the front seat of the Impala, head on Dean’s lap as he dozes. Dean’s driving one-handed, fingers of his right hand buried in Sam’s mane, stroking through it to keep him relaxed. It works, just as it has since he was little. Sam looks up, a little dazed, and sees the fabric pulled back from Dean’s left hand, tattoo lit up by the afternoon beams of sun streaming into the car. He feels his tongue loosen, and barely keeps himself from asking. He wants to let Dean have that secret for himself. Like always, though, Sam wonders.  


When Dean dies his final death, Sam washes and stitches Dean’s body for the third time. He replaces his watch with Dean’s, kisses his brother’s cheek, and wraps the body in a white shroud. He builds the pyre and burns the body, and feels shattered, knowing in his bones that he’s never going to be completely repaired.  


When Sam goes through Dean’s things, he doesn’t find the notebook of tick marks.  


*  


In heaven, Dean still has that single tally mark on his wrist. On the bridge, every hurt and broken part of Sam heals as he holds Dean’s left wrist in his hand and presses his lips down against it, once, feels a pulse this time, whispers, awed, “De.”  


Dean smiles when Sam asks about the tattoo and the notebook despite already having a guess as to what it means.  


“After Hell, I stopped keeping track of how many monsters I killed and started keeping track of how many people we saved.”  


Sam opens his mouth to ask about why Dean burned the first notebook, but Dean cuts him off, adds, “It doesn’t matter how many people I save if I become a monster, Sammy. So I started over.”  


Dean pauses, says, haltingly, “After Chuck, though, I got this tattoo. One more kill, and one more life saved.”  


Sam grins. He knows. In sparing Chuck, the being Dean had wanted to kill more than anyone, he had put down the monster inside him, the part of himself that was black-eyed and had sharp teeth that dripped blood, the part that came out in all its fury in Hell and again as a Knight.  


Sam understands. Except that part of himself has cadmium yellow eyes.  


He has his hand on Dean’s chest and he strokes his thumb along his freckled clavicle in sympathy. Dean smiles at him, eyes soft and grass green and content. He curls his fingers over the back of Sam’s neck and kisses his forehead, right between his brows. Smoothing his thumb over his left eyebrow, he nudges their foreheads together with shut eyes, savoring. Suddenly, Sam is back in that barn, feeling the magnitude of Dean’s love as they let go of each other, as they parted, each with half of the other’s heart trapped behind the white of their rib cages. It’s not an unhappy memory. He aches with it anyway, and tears well in his eyes, one escaping.  


Dean pulls away first, wipes it away. Grabbing Sam’s hand, he urges them toward the Impala, the same way he did when Sam was thirteen and Dean dragged him to the center of a field to set off fireworks on July 4, 1996. Dean’s left wrist brushes against his arm, and he can almost feel the warmth of the tattoo.  


His brother looks over when they climb into Baby, her chassis creaking familiarly.  


Turning fully towards Sam, Dean flaps his hands, the tattoo blurring in front of Sam as he requests, excitedly, “Tell me about your life, Sammy.”  


Sam reaches out and takes Dean’s hand in his again, thumb on his pulse point, covering the line from his view. He starts from the beginning, and when he talks about Dean Junior, Dean begins to weep tears of joy and awe, fingers curled tight into the hem of Sam’s shirt.  


Sam leans over and kisses the tears away just like he used to do for his son, just like his big brother (his father and mother, his best friend and life partner) used to do for him.  


They wrap their arms around each other and lean back into the seat, Dean’s fingers in Sam’s hair and Sam’s head on Dean’s chest. He continues telling stories of his son, and they are both happy, happy, happy.  


Because they’re together, and everything is peaceful and perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> in case it wasn't clear, after hell, dean uses the black notebook to keep track of lives saved. he burns that notebook because he thought of himself as a monster, because he almost killed sam. he starts over again in the blue notebook, but gets rid of it after chuck because he no longer needs to keep track. he no longer needs to tally his good deeds against his bad deeds, because the monster in him is dead. 
> 
> also: find me on tumblr at @wordsfallapart so we can scream about platonic soulmates together.


End file.
